Freezing pizza dough, Pop's b-day, and school projects.

My pizza dough freezes, but there's a trick to it! This is great, because I can take it out right before I go to bed in the morning and it's ready to make when I wake up! Have to make sure it's in a warm part of the house while it's thawing/rising.

I've been toying with this recipe for a long time, since we lived in Turkey from 1980 to 1982 and pizza was hard to come by, so Mom helped me out by giving me a recipe. The hard part about bread is that you see the recipe, but you don't know the *why* to the chemical process involved. Here's a basic pizza dough recipe. The kneading is important. Why? It determines the density and consistency of your bread. This basic pizza dough recipe can be tampered with and used to make monkey bread (more sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla), bread sticks (little dough balls kneaded a tad longer), braided bread (strips and painted with egg), or even loaf bread. Someone asked me about special flour, and I've never used any. I suppose you could, but what's the point? I've done bread with rye, whole wheat, and plain flour from the store, so that's the limits of my experience, but here goes the pizza recipe I use:

When cooking with whole wheat flour, it's a necessity to mix it half and half with white flour, because I haven't figured out to make it come out lighter than lead otherwise.

I'm going for enough for a big regular cookie sheet (no air-bake pans). The big thing is: No metal used in preparation, including spoons, bowls, or covering the dough during rising.

1 cup hot water (just a little uncomfortable for your finger)

1 package yeast or enough yeast to almost cover the water in the bowl

Proof yeast: Stir yeast with one tsp of sugar, let sit until bubbles form or a light froth covers the surface. If it does not proof, your yeast won't make anything rise.

1 tsp salt or a bit more, add spices (basil, oregano, pepper flakes) at this stage, if desired. If using dried parmesan or onions, add a bit more water to accommodate the way those items will soak up some water.

3 tsp oil (optional - I usually leave out and use olive oil for when I spread the dough on the pan).

Flour - no real measure, here, but probably 2-1/2 cups. You want to add half and half of wheat/white or all white until you stir and the whole ball wants to wrap around the spoon and it's all mixed together. It will be very, very gummy at this stage, but no liquid at all.

Kneading/adding more flour: This is where you can start making it more whole wheat. How much you knead will make your dough:

Cake-like, still just a bit tacky, about two minutes

Very firm and pliable, four minutes or more. Not tacky at all, very elastic. Good for calzones.

Let rise in a warm place, covered, for at least 45 minutes. I've been stuck out of the house for more than 2 hours while the dough was rising, and it didn't affect the quality of the dough.

Put some olive oil on the hands and spread, spread, spread. Make a bit more dough for cheese in the crust and push the dough out over the edge of the pan and fold over a slice of cheese.

Preheat oven to 375 and that's about 35 to 40 minutes. The cheese melting is usually a very good gauge, no matter the thickness of your pizza.

This doubles like a dream. I do all my mixing to kneading in a big plastic 99-cent bowl from Wal-Mart so I don't have to deal with the mess on my counter.

FREEZING (here's the "trick to it" from above): If you want to freeze it, separate the dough at the end of the kneading process, wrap generously and loosely in plastic wrap or put in a baggie. MAKE SURE TO LEAVE SOME SPACE for it to have room to expand, or else you get your corn smashed between big hard rocks of pizza dough that have conformed to the shape of your wire freezer shelf, and the kids WILL laugh at you while you wrestle pizza dough. To thaw, put it out at 7:00 a.m. in a warm place, cover, and should be good to go by 5:00, then just spread and decorate, same cooking time.



In other news, I'll be glad when the end-of-the year flurry for final projects in our school system is over. So far this week, I've made a how-to project from polymer clay (it looks so good, though, and KitKat and I had a blast--pictures to follow), made a guessing game out of the T.V. show "Lost" in Spanish, and put together a folder for the state and US constitution. Oh, we also did a family history thing for extra credit because someone's got a C in social studies and she just won't stand for it. I wonder where she got that anal tendency? Hm? She did five reports on family members, and I had to track down/scan pictures for some of it. Mom, big public thank you and smoochies for the rest. Oh, we did something on Sputnik in there, too. I'm thinking ManCub must be hiding some project from me, because I'm just waiting. I keep asking, but he's denying, and if he's got a brain block, someone will pay dearly in services around the house.

Joni's here! Kaplan loves my gerbils and my bunny got mad when Joni put him away, and he thumped his little foot against the bottom of the cage. My niece likes to touch faces and, if you're in range, she'll suck on your nose or chin. Hers is a sweetie, and here she is bestowing 93rd birthday blessings on Pop: